Infographic of the Day: 14 Surprising Facts About Beer

St. Patrick's Day is tomorrow — which means that many of you will be drinking lots and lots of green beer, and suffering the consequences. Which isn't exactly great for your health, but you can take solace in the fact that beer, in moderation, might actually be kinda great for you.
The many benefits are laid out in this infographic by design firm Belancio. Among other things, we learn, for example, that beer is better at flushing your kidneys than water, fights osteoporosis, and it lowers cholesterol.

[Click to enlarge]

Of course, those benefits would hardly outweigh the problems with drinking too much. And you've got to take many of these factoids with a heaping grain of salt — for example, just because hops contains anti-oxidants, it doesn't mean that the beer made from it contains anti-oxidants. And it's totally unclear for many of these miracle ingredients whether beer actually contains them in meaningful amounts. Moreover, the contention that moderate drinking leads to decreased mortality — outlined in that very clever bar chart up top — is controversial.
But still, when you're stumbling home tomorrow, there's a few facts in here worth savoring. Too bad you didn't stop drinking after two glasses.